


You Know Where My Office Is

by joely_jo



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Betazed, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Episode: s05e12 Violations, Episode: s05e14 Conundrum, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Imzadi (Star Trek), Love, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26603701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: In the aftermath of the incident with the Lysian Alliance, Will and Deanna must work through what happened while their memories were gone.
Relationships: William Riker/Deanna Troi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 49





	You Know Where My Office Is

**Author's Note:**

> As I've said before, I'm basically working on the premise that the events of the book Imzadi never actually happened. Instead, my headcanon for Will and Deanna's relationship on Betazed is more what is presented in my other stories, specifically Beyond the Briar Patch and the Moondance series.

You Know Where My Office Is

Will Riker had never actually visited the Enterprise's counselling rooms for anything other than social reasons. He had been lucky enough to have never required any real need of them, and there were certain benefits to being imzadi to the ship’s counsellor. When he needed counselling, she often knew it before he did and came to see him, or he could seek her help under the guise of dinner or drinks. But today he found himself standing outside Deanna’s office, fidgeting and wondering whether this move was going to help things.

Because, since the incident with ‘Commander Macduff’ and the Lysian Alliance, and with Ensign _bloody_ Ro, Deanna had been, if not outright avoiding him, then certainly treating him as if he had a contagious disease and she should remain, at all times, distant from him. He knew why, of course. He wasn’t that stupid. But, nevertheless, it hurt and it hadn’t taken long before he’d realised how much he missed her in his life – the unprompted social calls to his cabin, the casual meals when they were off duty together, the way she was just _there_.

Now, she hadn’t been _there_ for nearly two weeks. And it was starting to affect him on a whole deeper level than he’d ever imagined. He was having trouble sleeping; he couldn’t stop thinking about what an idiot he’d been and he was finding his concentration wasn’t what it normally was, constantly distracted as he was by thoughts of how he could extend a metaphorical olive branch or in some way repair the bridges between them. He was sure she was aware that he was struggling, but apparently it didn’t seem to be enough for her to put it behind her.

He could hear the muffled sounds of conversation behind the doors and knew she was obviously in session with someone, so he paced a little, studied the wall art a little, fiddled and fidgeted some more, then finally took a seat in the waiting area.

Twenty minutes later, he was still waiting and the chair was making his back hurt, so he stretched out his legs, closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall behind him…

…and woke to the sound of someone clearing their throat loudly. Before him stood Deanna, arms folded, her hip dropped in a manner that suggested she was wholly unimpressed with him and a look on her face that could’ve frozen a solar flare in its path.

“Commander,” she said. “Why are you asleep in my waiting area?” 

“Hm? I, er, Deanna…” He blinked a few times as his brain woke up and reoriented him. “Sorry, I… I must be more tired than I thought. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Quickly, he stood and straightened up, tugging his uniform top down.

“Perhaps you should go back to your cabin and get some rest then, instead of sitting out here. It can’t be comfortable for you.”

He narrowed his eye and studied her. “Look, Deanna, I’m here because I’m sick of this game you’re playing—”

“The game _I’m_ playing?” she said icily.

“Are you going to listen to me or what?” he snarked. She huffed out a breath, indicating that he should go on, but also that whatever he was going to say had better be good or he’d regret it. “I want to apologise for what I did while our memories were gone. I hate this side-stepping you’re doing at the moment, like you can’t stand to be in the same room as me. I made a stupid mistake, when I wasn’t really in control of my faculties—”

“What I told you in Ten Forward is accurate, Will,” she said. Her voice was just a little softer than it had been, though, so he nodded and agreed,

“It might be, but you of all people should know how your experiences form who you are and how they can change you. I had none of those experiences to guide me or change my behaviour.”

“So it’s unsurprising that you were quite happy to lead two women on at the same time because your personal experiences had not yet taught you that such things were unacceptable? That you were acting on your baser instincts alone…”

He winced. “Well, I suppose that’s a very crude way of putting it, yes.”

“When you put it that way, you seem like quite the pig, Will.”

“But I’m not, am I, Deanna?” he objected. “I’ve never cheated on anybody. I’ve would never be knowingly disrespectful to a woman. I might enjoy sex as much as the next man but I love women and I love…” He stopped and looked at her significantly. “I love you.” She eyeballed him and he wondered if he’d said something incredibly stupid yet again. “I don’t mean in a physical sense, because obviously that’s not where our relationship is any more, but Deanna, I’ve always loved you. You’re important to me, vital… like air or food or…” He gave up that line of argument as he saw her expression darken further and sighed. “Isn’t that what you taught me imzadi was? That we’re a part of each other forever, no matter what happens. Isn’t that what you meant when you said I was familiar?”

“But you clearly didn’t feel that same thing,” she said in a quiet voice that he wasn’t quite sure was quiet because she was angry or because she was hurt. Or maybe it was both.

“Did you ever ask me?” he demanded. “No, you just assumed. Big, dumb Will with his _human_ emotions couldn’t possibly have felt the same way you did with your Betazoid empathy and intuition.”

She stared at him for a long moment. He briefly wondered if she was going to explode and slap him, but as the silence stretched, she seemed to calm. 

“Did you feel the same way?” she finally asked.

“That night you came to my quarters, I did. I’d found that book and read what you’d written, and then read the poems inside…” He shook his head. “And then you showed up and you looked at me and Deanna… _Deanna_ , I felt this pull… It was intense. Like magnetism. I wanted to kiss you so badly. And then the door chime rang and it was Ro and I realised how it would look. Because there I was standing in front of you, feeling like you were drawing me in and she was looking at me like she was going to eat me for supper…” His voice trailed off and he met her eyes desperately, challengingly. “Tell me that pull wasn’t our bond. Tell me it wasn’t imzadi.”

Her face softened and he could tell he’d hit home. He waited for her to reply. “If Ro hadn’t rung the chime, would you have kissed me?”

“I couldn’t _not_ have kissed you, Deanna,” he said.

“And then what would have happened?”

“I don’t know… I do know that I wanted to be inside your skin, though, and in that moment, I’d have done just about anything to be there.”

“Perhaps it’s a good thing that Ensign Ro arrived when she did then. Or we’d have had an even bigger problem on our hands.”

“Perhaps…” allowed Will.

They fell silent. Deanna looked down at the floor, the anger suddenly gone from her and in its place a kind of sadness. He could feel it rolling off her like water spilled from a glass. “Hey,” he said. “You’re sad. I can feel it.”

She turned away quickly, avoiding him as he reached out for her. “Don’t Will. We should leave this alone now. It’s not a good thing for us to be exploring right now.”

“I thought you were angry with me… I came here to apologise and set things right.”

“Please, Will,” she begged, refusing to look at him. He suddenly felt a wave of guilt wash over him, for showing up at her office, for pushing the point, for upsetting her with whatever he’d upset her with. He wasn’t quite sure how everything had changed. He’d thought he’d come here to apologise and challenge her into forgiving him. Now, it seemed he’d opened a whole other can of worms.

He nodded, feeling wordless. When she didn’t turn back to him, he knew he had to just leave her alone and as hard as that was for him, it was what she wanted and that would always be the most important thing of all for him.

***

Several days passed. Will went about his business, doing his duty, and once again, it seemed as if she was avoiding him. Not overtly, of course. That wasn’t her style. But instead she subtly avoided coming out of her office to spend time on the Bridge and would return to her quarters at the end of her shift without choosing to spend time anywhere else. He knew he had to let her work through whatever it was that was bothering her, but nonetheless, it needled at him.

Until one morning, his first day off in over a week, he decided to vent some of his frustration by booking out a holodeck and having another go at climbing the Black Cuillin on the Isle of Skye. It’d been a few years since he’d loaded the programme and then he’d been interrupted when he was just over halfway up by a call from Engineering. It was a challenging ridge and he knew he’d need his wits about him if he was going to turn off the safety and weather protocols and not wind up in Sickbay. He kitted himself out with appropriate gear, then made his way down to the holodeck, feeling for the first time in about a week, energised by the task ahead of him.

He was about to open his mouth to speak to the computer and load up the programme when he realised the holodeck was already running. Briefly wondering if he’d messed up his booking, he frowned and called out, “Computer, who is currently in Holodeck Three?”

“Counsellor Deanna Troi is in Holodeck Three,” replied the computer.

Oh. 

He stared at the companel for a moment. She had to have known it was his booking. The computer would have told her so when she tried to enter. Drawing himself up and taking a deep breath, he stepped towards the doors. They opened onto an epic vista of the Scottish mountain range, huge blue skies colliding with dark grey peaks, a few wispy clouds curled like lazy cats on the horizon. With her back to him, she stood on a stone bridge spanning a rocky riverbed where icy water rippled and twisted between boulders and stones, the wind licking at her hair.

Slowly, he made his way toward the bridge, then called her name. “Deanna?” She turned and looked at him, wrapping her arms around herself. “What are you doing here?”

“What is this place, Will? It’s freezing.”

“It’s the Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye in Scotland on Earth. I was going to climb it.” He tipped his chin towards the crouching hulk of the mountain range before them. She frowned.

“Up there?”

“Yes. It’s one of a list I haven’t managed to do yet.”

She seemed to notice his clothing, boots and the ropes and compass hanging from his pack for the first time. “How long will you—”

“—be up there?” he finished for her. “About ten or eleven hours, probably, up and down. If I’m not interrupted and the weather stays fair.”

“The weather will stay fair if you tell the computer to keep it fair.”

“I know, but I like to disengage the safety protocols when I’m climbing. It makes it more realistic. More of a challenge.” She looked at him like he was insane and he laughed. “You think I’m nuts.”

“I’ve always thought you were a little bit nuts,” she admitted and a gentle smile crossed her lips. They regarded one another for a moment, then he moved closer to her.

“We need to talk, Deanna.”

Her eyes flicked away from his. “That’s why I came to find you,” she said quietly.

“You could’ve changed the programme.” 

With a shrug, she replied, “It seemed appropriate somehow.” 

He looked around at the wide open space, the sparse moorland and the dark mountains and chose not to think about why she thought it was an appropriate place to talk about their relationship.

There was a long pause, then she murmured, “Do you think we’re being foolish?”

“Foolish how?”

“By choosing the path we’ve chosen.” She took in a deep breath. “Will, if we both felt a pull towards one another when we had lost our memories, why are we resisting it now our memories have returned?”

He drew in his own breath. The question felt loaded, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of the implication behind it or because he already knew the answer and he knew she wasn’t going to like it. “We made an agreement,” he said simply. “We agreed that we wouldn’t take our relationship further while we were both serving on the same ship. You must remember that night in my quarters as well as I do, Deanna. It’s lived with me for a few years now.”

Her eyes grew distant and he knew she was thinking of the same evening he was, of the chips from his poker set spilling on the floor and the lines between them being redrawn in the quiet of his quarters.

That night had spelled the end of a run of months where, for a time, it had seemed inevitable that they would get back together, their mutual and never denied attraction pulling them closer and closer. It’d been just after the horror of the Borg, after nearly a month spent in dock at McKinley Station and an unplanned but much needed ten days of shore leave at Angel Falls. The Enterprise had finally left orbit of Earth and got underway on a new mission and everyone had been glad to be back to routine, including their regular weekly poker game. In the late hours after one such game, their heads fuzzy with synthehol, he’d finally steeled his nerves and made his move… and been gently rejected.

It had surprised him, because he’d been convinced that his feelings were being reciprocated in kind and that she was as keen as he was to reignite the spark between them. But then she’d said no and gently pushed him away and that had been the end of it. 

“You said not while we were serving on the same ship…”

She looked away, her gaze drifting to the horizon where blue met grey in a hard line of unforgiving rock. “I respected your decision, Deanna,” he said. “I never pushed because I never wanted to upset you. Your feelings are very important to me – they always have been. I hurt you once; I’d never do it again.”

“I know that, Will,” she rushed to reassure him. “And I love you for that. But I suppose this whole incident has got me thinking about whether that decision was the right one to make.”

He blinked and frowned lightly. “You’re having second thoughts?”

Turning back to him, she said, “Computer, cancel programme. Load programme Troi Betazed 4.”

In the blink of an eye, the vista shimmered and shifted and then they were standing on a busy street, flanked on either side by shops and cafes. Will recognised it as Rixx, the city near where Deanna had grown up on Betazed. A quick glance around and he realised they were not far from the Starfleet base where he had been stationed back all those years ago. She looked at him. “Do you remember this place, Will?”

“It’s Rixx, isn’t it? Near the Starfleet base?” He turned a circle to orient himself. “We’re about ten minutes away if I remember right. The river is that way…” He gestured with his hand. “And the National Library is back there. The Museum of the Mind just about a kilometre in that direction.”

“That’s right.”

“But I don’t recognise this street. I guess I’ve been here before, but it doesn’t seem familiar.”

“This is where I first saw you,” she said softly.

Surprised, he tilted his head and smiled. “We met at that wedding. Your friend’s wedding. I hadn’t met you before then – I’d never even seen you. Believe me, I’d know if I had. You made quite an impression.”

“Oh no, I know we first _met_ at that wedding,” she explained, “but here was where _I_ first saw _you_.” She paused and turned around, pointing to a small café about fifty metres down the street. There were chairs and tables outside spilling onto the path, and a large green awning sheltered some of them from the sun. Huge native plants grew in square metal containers shielding some of the customers with their rubbery leaves, and as he looked around them, he realised that he was looking at himself. A much younger version of himself, admittedly, but nonetheless, it was definitely him. He was seated at one of the tables in the shade of the awning, a PADD in one hand. A finished plate of food was pushed to one side on the table and he appeared to be nursing a grand’ll wine in a traditional Betazoid glass. “I was sitting over there with my girlfriends. We were walking from the university to the Starfleet hospital and had decided to stop for a drink. I saw you and, well…” She looked down and blushed lightly. “I could barely take my eyes off you.”

Will grinned.

“Should I be concerned that you’ve got a programme of me so faithfully recreated, Deanna?” he enquired, teasingly.

She tossed him a look. “I made it to help me think the last few days over.”

“Well, forgive me, Counsellor, but I’m still not sure how this can be helping you.”

A sigh slipped out and she walked the few paces over to the café where the holographic version of him was sitting, pulled out a chair at one of the other tables and sat down. “I was nostalgic, Will. When we lost our memories, I felt attracted to you on such a deep level I can’t really explain it even now – a little bit like the first time I saw you, here. I said you felt familiar, and you did, but it was more than that. Looking at you felt like I was looking at someone of such importance to me. Someone whom I _knew_ …”

“You do know me,” he assured her. “Probably better than anyone has ever known me.”

“But to feel that sensation when you don’t even know yourself… That is most extraordinary.”

He came and stood before her, hesitated, then pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. “So what are you saying? That we should give us a chance again because there’s clearly something about each of us that is drawn to the other?”

“I don’t know, Will. Part of me wants to, now that I know that nothing has really changed between us, on the most basic level. But the other part of me feels like this whole experience has shown me how we’re just not quite ready. It’s more than just serving on the same ship together. That’s incidental, I think.” She paused and her eyes seemed to soften. She reached forward and took up his hand. “We need to wait until this feels right again. Reflexive. Like it should be.”

“Like it was that night in my quarters?”

“Yes, and when all this other stuff… doesn’t matter.”

He sighed. “The persistence of memory. Without all our history, it’s really simple, isn’t it?”

“I think it always will be, Imzadi. I can’t imagine that ever changing.”

They were silent for a long moment, as the people of Rixx passed by on the sidewalk outside the café and the chatter of fellow diners filled their ears. He allowed her words to sink into him, into that place inside him where he evaluated and considered and weighed things. When he looked up again, the holographic recreation of himself had disappeared, the leftovers of his meal cleared away and the table cleaned. “So are we friends again?” he asked eventually.

“I never said we weren’t.”

“Maybe not, but you certainly weren’t that keen to be around me.”

“Hm. Well, perhaps you should ask me to dinner and we can see if I’ve changed my mind,” she said with a small smile.

A rush of relief flooded through him and he grinned and got to his feet. “I think I’d like to see what other Betazed programmes you’ve got saved into the computer. This was number four, was it not? What about one, two and three?”

Her smile widened. “All right, Will. We can work our way through them all, then you can take me to dinner.”

“Deal,” he agreed happily. “Computer, load programme Troi Betazed 1.”

Immediately, the scene of the café and the city street vanished and was replaced by a well-manicured park filled with vast, complex sculptures and winding pink gravel pathways. He smiled. “I remember this place…”

“The Gardens at Hr’deen,” she said. “We came here for your birthday.”

“You brought cake and champagne.”

“You fell in the lake trying to pick uttaberries from an overhanging branch.”

They laughed. Will reached out his hand and she took it, stepping into his body. “Walk with me, Imzadi?”

“Always,” she replied and together they headed off down the path. 

As she let her head lean against his arm and threaded her fingers through his, Will breathed deep for the first time in days. He probed gently at the edges of her mind and received an answering caress in return. He smiled. The Black Cuillin would have to wait. Right now, he was indulging his soul. Ode to Psyche, indeed, he thought. 


End file.
